What is Microsoft Silverlight and why do I need it?

Microsoft's inability to resolve ANY issue never ceases to amaze me.

They're great at posting links and fobbing users off with other irrelevant pages and forums - but never a resolution. Never an actual answer. Always something or someone else.

Maybe the majority of us don't want to join communities, surf endlessly for answers that should, after several years of complaining, be resolved...

Like so many users, Microsoft's comprehensive buck-passing, or burying their heads in the sand, wears a little thin. In the OLD days (ten years ago) they provided fixes etc but nowadays, once they have your money in the bank, you can forget any support, helpfulness, proper answers or feedback.

Thanks for your info and input I did install Opera already but I am running Windows 8.1 on an ASUS X55c and I just upgraded memory from 6 to 8 GB and this thing is running incredible!!! I bought at a pawn shop with windows 7 basic and was filled with viruses spyware etc. I have been using IOLO's System Mechanic Professional for over 12 years now and it is the best utility software around. Been ranked #1 for last 8 years. You can download a 30 day fully functional trial version and check out all the features. It is bundled with extra software in the Pro version called System Shield and has a tool to block whatever you configure it for. If you already have anti-virus software then you just can't download System Shield, all other components will be installed. When I got this PC I used Drive Scrubber, and it wipes the HD completely using government standard coding and you can choose how many over-writes to do. I chose 5 times to re-assure I got rid of everything, I did a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate, then got my free upgrades to 8 then 8.1, which the later added the start menu on desktop and I configured it to start up on desktop just like all other older versions of windows. Well I would definitely give it a shot and try out SMP. The link is http://www.iolo.com/downloads/download-system-mechanic-pro/. If you do like it you can get the CD version at Best Buy or Walmart for $40 and annual renewal for $20. Not sure about Norton and others renewal price but I am pretty sure Norton MacAfee Kaspersky and so on are more expensive like $60 I think... AND they don't have any of the features you get with this software. Hope this helps and let me know if you tried SMP and how you liked it... Thanks, Dave

Yea, I don't like Google either...they are into too much of our computing as it is.

Glad to see that you weren't "on something" and it was just a glitch.

Another alternative to Chrome and IE is Opera.. and there are a few others as well, but this is the most common besides the other three e.g. google's Chrome, IE and FF.

I am using "Pale Moon" and it is kinda like "old school" firefox.  I personally haven't used IE since ver 4 or 5.

If you are serious about giving Linux a try then, I have a test for you, actually more of a questionnaire than a test..but they call it a test..they ask questions like "have you ever run Linux before" and depending on the answers you give, it recomends a certain distro, or group of distros. So, you just answer simple questions, and click next (you may have to scroll down to see the next button)

Edit:  The test is here>http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php?firsttime=true

Because I'm a linux newbe it recommended (for me) Linux Mint. L really like Mint...With the KDE desktop it feels a lot like Win7 to me (with the obvious Linux differences though)

I'm not ready to completely ditch MS just yet, but I'm getting closer every day.

There are free office programs for Linux and if you want to try them BEFORE you try Linux, you can try http://www.libreoffice.org/  and another free one is http://www.free-office.org/

There are also some good free email clients also like "thunderbird" which has a layout similar to Outlook Express.

Hope this helps, and I hope you have a great day.